Azul wrote:I think I found a version no one has posted yet (unless I missed something in the previous pages) ! Seems to be a special version for France, using Firefox browser. I've been (figuratively) dying to post it here for 2 days, I've even registered to the forum for this reason... but... couldn't find out how you manage to attach images to a post... (by the way, could someone tell me how to do that ?)Anyway, I finally put it in a googledoc : http://tinyurl.com/xkcd-french

Enjoy !

I think it might not be working until you have reached five posts (otherwise, see faq.php#f3r3)

Thanks for the upload, I think this one has been mentioned, but not posted before

førtito wrote:Just wanted to add something that has not been mentioned so far - at least to my knowledge:The german comic "Charilift" states

June 1948: In response to the sovietblockade of east germany, the westernallies construct the berlin chairlift.

I don't know if this is a joke but the Soviets never blocked East Germany - why should they? And given they did - why shall the western allies supply East Germany? To get them to love the soviets?

Ok what really happened was the blocking of West Berlin by the Soviets in order to get the western allies out of Berlin. But as you all are educated enough I don't have to say much about it. Was answered by the Western allies by the Berlin Airlift and given up on inefficiency several months later.

Yes, Randal got the "blockade East Germany" part wrong. The Soviets stopped rail and road supplies to west Berlin, in response to the creation of the new Deutschmark. The expected western response was either capitulation and abandoning Berlin, or an armored attack, which might have started World War III. We chose option three.

The Berlin Airlift from June 1948 to April 1949 was a spectacular success, both as a technical/logistics feat and a geopolitical coup. Remember, this was soon after the end of World War II, and many people of the Allied nations still hated Germans and Germany. The German attack on Stalingrad ended up with encirclement and a failed airlift to support 700,000 axis troops, with surrender in February 1943. Berlin held 2.8 million civilians, and the idea that a huge war-ravaged city could be supplied by air was ludicrous. There was much opposition to an Airlift among the American military, including the head of the air force, General Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay, who favored the military option. President Harry Truman was being hammered on all sides by war hawks, dixiecrats, and appeasement-at-any-cost leftists. The US and its allies seemed very weak and vulnerable.

By some miracle, the airlift was approved, and what could have been a humiliating failure for the west and mass executions for Berlin "collaborators" gained momentum and efficiency as time went on. Not only was NATO shipping food, but volume and efficiency grew to the point that they were shipping coal, vehicles and building materials to West Berlin. The Berlin people energetically unloaded planes, repaired runways and constructed new ones, and committed to rebuilding their city as part of the West. On April 15 1949, the "Easter Parade" delivered almost 13,000 tons of coal, and thereafter air cargo rates exceeded former rail and road deliveries. NATO could have continued the airlift indefinitely.

The rest of Germany and western Europe realized that if NATO could do this for Berlin, capital of the hated Nazis, they could safely commit to the western cause. A blockade that should have brought western Europe into the Soviet sphere instead became a humiliating defeat for the Soviets, and the beginning of the process that ended with the dissolution of the USSR. The people of Berlin, who a few months before hated the Allied terror bombers, came to love the NATO planes and pilots.

An excellent book about the airlift: "The Candy Bombers" by Andrei Cherny.

To me, the biggest miracle was that even though the US and Britain lost 70 airmen, they did not fire a shot. And the biggest tragedy was that the US forgot this; had we shown the same creativity, resourcefulness, and commitment to peaceful but muscular solutions in southeast asia, and the middle east, two bloody and futile conflicts would have become similar massive wins.

Berlin chairlift? In Randall's alternate world, it would have been followed by the Hanoi Snakelift (a tasty delicacy) and the Baghdad Spider-Hole Lift, so the entire Baath party could have gone into permanent hiding underground. Competence and creativity beats conflict. Always look for option three.

Well, well, xkcd definately 42'd it this time. Who would have though, after the 1024 desaster. Awesome multistrip is awesome. i thought i could get at least a few by heading to http://browsershots.org/http://xkcd.com/1037/But unfortunately ppl already did that. The really sad part is that no one seemed to care about IE6, and i'd bet my donkey on it that it would receive special attention (probably a mushroom cloud or a post-apocalyptic scene ). Now, where to get an XP preSP1 virus magnet activated machine just for the purpose of visiting 1037 (+ a happy ending)?

"I just want to say before I do this that I have no idea what I'm doing and I love you all very dearly. Ok lets light this bitch and hope for the best"-Myself before a homemade 4th of July fireworks extravaganza

kanraga wrote:From an MIT address, another variation on the Wellesley/Smith comic:http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/7628/xkcdmit.png

(Course 15 is Economics)

When I read the alt-text, I honestly thought "Umwelt" was referring to how MIT students in different majors perceived the same environment differently, and then I came to the forums and found another layer of recursive meaning. This is the greatest comic.

Have to jump in and correct you here, 15 is Management Science (Economics is 14). At MIT undergrad course 15 is typically the butt of all jokes, as it has a significantly lighter (and usually easier) workload than most of the other majors (related: example course 15 lab: http://lolbeavers.mit.edu/photo/15301-lab-5-bunnies/).

Of course, Course 15 is also the #2 undergrad business program in the US, only behind UPenn, and they tend to as a group go on to make gobs more money than the other majors at MIT, so, they get the last laugh.

Hey everyone,I am currently working on compiling all the available comics in an easy-to-view format. You can see the current collection on http://bugale.bplaced.net/xkcd/if you see a comic not present in my site (very likely atm as I don't have many yet), please visit http://umwelt.xkcd.com/story/ghenkEggov8 (this is the callback page the comic uses to pull data) and post the text that you get, in addition to your location\browser.

BTW, since I can recall seeing someone post it, in Tor I get the turtle comic. Which I actually thought was appropriate for Tor. Not sure if everyone gets that in Tor, I assume s and that this is by design.

Andre(=42)+J wrote:The really sad part is that no one seemed to care about IE6, and i'd bet my donkey on it that it would receive special attention (probably a mushroom cloud or a post-apocalyptic scene ). Now, where to get an XP preSP1 virus magnet activated machine just for the purpose of visiting 1037 (+ a happy ending)?

Some browsers got special comics but I can not promote IE even so far as to suggest people look for easter-eggs with it - especially old versions.

davean wrote:Some browsers got special comics but I can not promote IE even so far as to suggest people look for easter-eggs with it - especially old versions.

Amen to that. It's so weird that MS has started to run IE9 commercials. It wasn't too long ago that IE was so ubiquitous that a TV commercials would be unthinkable. But now there's actually competition in the in the web browser market!

I did use IE to look-up the comic. On Sunday, I went to the Microsoft Store here in San Jose and brought-up the comic on one of the display laptops. I got the Microsoft specific comic about the plug-in not being authorized by corporate. My wife and I left it up as we left the store.

Anyways, this was a great idea. It must have been a nightmare for you to prepare.

The one about seeing "just clouds" in the green cold aurora borealis outdoors is the true comic. It is the only true comic; those other ones you all keep talking about are false comics and the result of evil and delusion. Repent! REPENT.

See, I saw the tunnel as being the thing stuck in the snake, but that is likely as I saw the light at the end of the tunnel image on my mobile (iPhone 3s) and the snake was the second one and most mentioned one.

So I decided to mess with that snake that's been coming up in Firefox for me. I set my screen resolution to 2048x1536. It strained my monitor and I actually had to scroll back and forth to see both ends of my desktop, but what I got was this...http://s13.postimage.org/93o1901if/snake.jpg

It's the full snake, end to end, and the last slide is actually the mirror opposite of what's happening in the first. Until I find my way to a 2 monitor setup, I can only assume that it's the full image, although the individual slides switch up a bit in between.

keithl wrote:Yes, Randal got the "blockade East Germany" part wrong. The Soviets stopped rail and road supplies to west Berlin, in response to the creation of the new Deutschmark. The expected western response was either capitulation and abandoning Berlin, or an armored attack, which might have started World War III. We chose option three.

[snip detailed story]

Thanks, keithl. Though I guess I knew most of that, it was an interesting read. Always look for option three.

In Northampton, England, I get the one about him not being able to make jokes about England on Firefox.

On my phone, I get a triangle in an exclamation mark saying "Data Error: T-Mobile was unable to establish a connection". T-Mobile is my mobile provider (it also fails to establish a connection all the time, so I laughed).

That was my thought, but I don't think it is as it looked diffrent here : http://xkcd.com/396/I think its the most basic Umwelt idea. Its something simple that looks diffrent depending on your perception, more specificaly the movies you have seen.

haha01haha01 wrote:Hey everyone,I am currently working on compiling all the available comics in an easy-to-view format. You can see the current collection on http://bugale.bplaced.net/xkcd/if you see a comic not present in my site (very likely atm as I don't have many yet), please visit http://umwelt.xkcd.com/story/ghenkEggov8 (this is the callback page the comic uses to pull data) and post the text that you get, in addition to your location\browser.

I have to say, this is genius, simple little adjustments for all these different locations/browsers/settings. I have been a follower for probly a couple years now, and never made a forum account til today. currently overseas, and in an identical situation to what pops up for us over here. Though the laptop connected to the system doesn't have internet, the one next to it was on xkcd:) nail on the head....printed it off and posted it next to the radar screen(not missiles...rockets and mortars and artillery though lol) Glorious!